The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1887-02-02
CHAPTER VIII.


In a quiet village of New York, Myra
Whitney made her home with the man
who had won her against so much op-
position and amid so many trials. She
had cast of the splendor of her old life,
and, sharing the fortunes of her hus-
band, began new and still more noble
existence; but directly came one to the
little Eden with news that would hence
forth and forever more drive quiet away
from her home.
A man who was well acquainted with
the frauds that had been practiced on
the infant heiress, sought out the young
bride and told her of the vast wealth
illegally withheld from her by the ex-
ecutors of Daniel Clark estate-told
her of that which stirred the proud
blood in her veins more warmly than
any idea of wealth could have done
the doubt that had been craftily thrown
on her own legitimacy, and thus ON the
fair fame of her mother.
From that day all hope of repose fled
from her happy home. A stern duty
was before her-that of retrieving the
wrongs heaped ON her mother, and OF
Wrestling the honorable name of father,
whom she worshipped even in memory,
from the odium that had been fastened
upon his actions. Joined to all this,
was the natural ambition of a high
spirited and proud young woman to
claim her true position in the world,
and to endow the man of her choice
with wealth Justly her own, but of
which he had been all unconscious at
the time of their marriage; and now
! ar,. hn trIf hAfwRAn
Justice and fraud which has for more
than twenty years made the romance of
our courts.
With her young husband Myra went
to New Orleans, and there gathered up
those threads of evidence which laid
the iniquity which had darkened her
whole life, bare before the world. There
she found Madame de Gordette, her
mother, the Zulima of our true story,
and there, for the first time, she learned
all the domestic romance of her own
history The anguish that had followed
her mother, the remorse and solemn res
titution that had marked the closing
hours of her fathers life.
To being ambitious and imaginative
as Myra, this interview with her mother
was calculated to make a painful and
solemn impression. The one great idea
of her life became a firm resolve; to
that she was ready to sacrifice domestic
peace and all those feminine aims which
spring from highly cultivated tastes.
Still womanly in all her acts, she took
upon herself the research and duties of
a man, not alone, but hand in hand
with the husband whose happiness and
aggrandizement would be secured by
these exertions.
But the vast property of Daniel Clark
had been scattered far and wide by the
men who had taken it in trust. The
personal property had melted away first,
then tract after tract of land block upon
block Of real estate had followed, till
the claimants, most of them innocent
purchasers, might be counted by hun
dreds.
But tie greater the obstacles that
presented themselves, the more resolute
| became this young creature In the ad-
vocacy of her own just cause. All ne
cessary evidence of the existence of a
last will and of its destruction was Sc
cured; witnesses of Zulima's marriage
with Daniel Clark in Philadelphia, still
existed.
The mother herself, though shrinking
from the cruel publicity of her wrongs,
gave such aid as her naturally shrinking
nature now rendered almost timid by
suffering would permit. Men of infu-
ence, struck by the sublime spectacle of
fair young creature, with scarcely the
physical strength of a child, entering
courageously on battle where such
fearful odds prevailed against her, came
generously to her support. The great
fight of her life opened hopefully; vic
tory might be distant, but she would
not doubt that it would come at last.
But in the midst of her first struggle
she had forgotten to be prudent, indeed
precaution was scarcely natural to that
early period of her life. By adoption
she had become child of the North,
but the warm gentle glow of her blood
still sympathized with the sunny climate
to which she had moved, fearlessly,
with her little children at the most dan
gerous season of the year.
But her husband was a northern man
by birth, and he did not assimilate
readily to the hot moist climate of New
Orleans The excitement into which he
was thrown doubtless added to the
causes which oppressed him; in the
midst of his struggles, in the full bloom
and force of his manly youth, Whitney
was struck down among the first victims
that the yellow fever seized upon that
yoar.
i They were living at hotel in the
heart of the city, with no home com
forts around them, and surrounded by
crowd of enemies-sueh as spring
from hotly-contested lawsuits where
many persons are interested in the
defense. To all those persons Who hac
in any way attained a claim on th'
property of Daniel Clark, his daughter
was, of course, held as an aggressive
enemy-a woman who had come witt
her ambition and her doubtful claims
; to disturb the tranquility of a grea
city.
Many of these persons, having bough
the property they possessed in goot
faith, really felt her action to be grea
. wrong-they had no means of KNOWN,
the facts of a case over which so man,
legal minds have struggled, and natu
rally sided with their own visible inter
ests against the fair claimant. Thu
the yellow fever, which struck her hus
land down in a single hour, found Myr
! in the midst of enemies such as few VIC
: men have ever encountered.
e All day Myra had been lonely an
! sad, her children felt the heavy effect
: of the climate, and her own bright enel
: gies seemed yielding themselves to tn
enervating influences that srrrounde
them. Sometimes in the great.struggl
Z that she had commenced so bravely
Myra felt the painful reaction whic
!. springs from long strain upon th
e energies. That day she had been thinl
q ing Of her pretty home in the North, {
}, its quietude, its cool thickets, and tt
o great forest trees that oyershadowed
], Near the house was a spring of water
one of those natural outgushes of cry
d tai waves which children love to pla
It near. and whose flow is remembered
e the sweetest music in the world afte
lt ward.
r In the heat and closeness of her roor
II Myra's thoughts had been constant
:, going back to this spring. The childre
also prattled about it between ther
c selves. and once had joined in prett
petition to the languid mother tn
z they might go back again and play on
II of-doors.
Mvra felt the tears come to her ey
as she answered them; there was
real cause for this depression, but
lg had fallen heavily upon her all da.
ar she felt like snatching up her little on
+ and fleeing with them to the northwar
NJ where they might all breathe and laug
% freely.
ne While the young wife was in th
u strange mood the door opened and b
y husband came in. She glanced up
his face, smiling welcome, but l
eyes were heavy, and hot crims'
ne burning on either cheek startled her.
e She put the children aside, and se
u ing his hand gave another terrified 10